Making Facebook Productive

After years of avoiding Facebook for a variety of reasons, it became impractical to avoid it any longer due to a variety of groups and events I was both joining and wanting to create.

Once I added my first “friends” (who are not exclusively close friends, but also acquaintances and co-workers that I share a group with), joined a few groups and signed up for some events, I noticed that my news feed was absolutely useless. Despite being in groups and events with focused activity, it was being drowned out by the noise of random activity from my Facebook friends.

After some time spent looking around, I discovered the solution to cleaning up the newsfeed and making Facebook a productive group and event management tool:

1. Unfollow every person you are currently Facebook friends with. This can be done directly from their post in the newsfeed.
2. Continue to unfollow every new person you friend on Facebook when you see a post from them in your newsfeed that isn’t associated with a group or event you’re involved with.
3. Productivity!

The first two steps prevent any posts that aren’t made in a group or event you’re participating in from appearing in your newsfeed, meaning your newsfeed consists of more signal and less noise. Of course, the exact ratio depends on the activity in your groups and events.

I’ve been using this method for the past few months now with great success. I check my newsfeed daily and it contains relevant, focused information. As for keeping up with the happenings of my close friends, I still utilize the old-school methods of phone, text and spending time with them in person.